Carrot Cake Muffins

Some tea, some knitting and some muffins. It was wonderful.
In all their deliciousness, these are gluten & diary free, vegan and there’s no refined sugar.
Yes really, and you’re welcome 😉
I had them for breakfast every day this week, and though I don’t have a lot of demands at 06.30 in the morning on a commuters train, I was surprised to see they held up very well and stayed fresh for 3-4 days.

I used the last summer carrots from the garden. They didn’t do so well this year. The snails eat most of the seedlings early in the spring, and the new ones I sowed got so much sun and so little rain, there was no winning there. Still, some of them grew, and I enjoyed lots of little snack breaks with the sweet earthy taste.

While harvesting the last carrots, i thought about how this is the second year of gardening and growing vegetables, and how it has thought me so much. Last year I felt loads of pressure to be perfect and get everything right, so by the end of the summer I had no energy or motivation to do anything really.

Come spring this year, I was surprised to learn that lots of last years knowledge had seeped into my body. Quite literally, my hands were so much more capable of handling the seedlings, of knowing a plants condition by touching the leaves, and my mind could now oversee the whole of the seasons much better. It felt less overwhelming, and some days I even felt like i knew what i was doing.

Noticing these changes and being mindful to them has been paramount for me, these past months. It does not only apply to the garden anymore, it became a story about life.
It thought me a lot about opening up to changes in my life, about embracing new rituals and habits, about learning new skills and allowing them to change me for the better. So often we resist change, we resist what is unknown of unfamiliar, afraid that we will lose what we have, that we will loose ourselves. We think that what we have, what we know, what has become habitual to us, is all there is.
We label it ‘truth’ and forget about all the gorgeous things that come from the willingness to change.
Accustom as we are to avoiding everything uncomfortable, we stay put.

But. If we can accept a little bit of pressure, a little bit of uncomfortableness, we might be able to stretch ourselves, our souls, our relationships a bit further.

In one of my Yin Yoga classes, the teacher always spoke of ‘green pain’ and ‘red pain’. Green pain is when you’re stretching your boundaries enough to feel it, but you’re able to breathe into it and you’re not harming yourself.
Instead, the focused breath and careful stretching make a muscle stronger, more flexible and brings deeper flow of energy and oxygen.
Red pain is when you overdo it. You reach to far, hold on to long, and tear a muscle.

The same thing applies to the mind. Green pain, a bit of uncomfortable reaching paired with deep, conscious breathing and compassion for the path you are on, makes us more flexible, gives us a wider perspective, a broader view.
Ultimately, feeling this, sitting with it and breathing through it, just compassionate of the path we’re on makes us calmer. Quieter. Closer to everything alive.

Though far from complete or perfect, the garden thought me some of that this year. Walking the earth carrying a bit of that that calm is abundance in a way i have not felt before.

Preheat the oven to 180 C or 350 F.
Mix all ingredients together except for the last four (flowers, soda and baking powder)
Stir well to combine.
Then sift in the remaining ingredients. The mixture should be thick and sticky, but you should still be able to stir. Add a little milk if it’s too dry.
Divide among the muffin tins. I use a silicone one, to avoid the paper lay-ins. If you use a metal one, grease generously.
Put the muffins in the oven for 20 – 30 minutes. They are ready when the top is slightly browned and firm to the touch.
Leave to cool before removing them from the tin, and allow them to cool completely before diving in.
Trust me on that one, they taste even better that way.